


In Darkness [Soulmate!AU]

by WindMeister8



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blind Character, Cage Fights, F/M, Fighter, Soulmates, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 08:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4385741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WindMeister8/pseuds/WindMeister8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where "Survival Of The Fittest" is taken literally, a blind woman like you has to find your own light in the darkness. Soulmates are a fancy thing but without practicality, in your opinion. But what happens when you meet an injured stranger in the dark alleyways?</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Darkness [Soulmate!AU]

**Author's Note:**

> **(AU Note: For maximum effect, listen to[this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvMA20MeOKk))**

The little bus rattled along the small uneven road, its engine coughing loudly with each bump and rut that it encountered. The four occupants of the bus bounced up and down in their seats with each maneuver of the bus. None of them complained, all eyes on the scenery surrounding them. The bus driver grinned as he watched the three passengers looking out the windows, excitement reflected in their eyes.

“Feast your eyes, mates. Ain’t nothing as beautiful as this countryside,” he called out.

“Ain’t that the truth of it,” one of the female passengers called out before turning to her son who was staring open-mouthed at the green fields dotted with yellow and red flowers. “Remember all this color, son. It’ll be another year before you see everything in grey.”

The young kid turned to look at his mother. “When can I see everything in color again, Mum?”

Patting his head, she smiled and replied, “That’s when you find your soulmate.”

“Cool!” he exclaimed and shifted his gaze back to the sprawling fields that rolled past his window.

Shaking her head, she turned to the other female passenger seated across from her. “Kids. They don’t know how difficult it is to find a soulmate.”

Smiling, the lady replied, “He’ll learn in time. Best to savor the colors while it lasts.”

“You find your soulmate yet, hun?” 

A light pink dusted the lady’s cheeks as she nodded. “Yes, I did.” She smiled and turned to look out the window, the same colorful fields appearing to her in shades of grey.

For her, colors hadn’t erupted into her vision as soon as she found her soulmate. She was born blind. And due to her natural disability, she had been relegated to the lower class, living in the Underground slums, after she had come of age. It wasn’t the worst fate possible but it was a tough life. Her parent belonged to the middle class and although they had wanted to cure her of her blindness, they couldn’t afford the medical treatment. Instead, they furnished her with a good education and when it was finally time for her to leave, they cried buckets, embracing her tightly until the militia had to forcefully separate the family.

Initially, she suffered bullying and harassment from the lower class people who viewed her as a snob. But eventually, she learnt to survive and scratch out a living by begging and offering her services as a Morse code operator. A couple of months into her new life, one of the gangs who controlled a small turf in the slums nearby recruited her as a teacher. They were a less vicious gang that had been newly formed, consisting of people who wanted to rise above the life that had been forced upon them. They desired her knowledge for it was a privilege for someone in these slums to even be able to read or write.

So she started off teaching young kids and gradually moved on to the adolescents who were more difficult to deal with. But her strict yet realistic approach to teaching soon won over her students. Her lessons were not only about math and science but extended to literature, fine arts, cooking and even life in general. They came to view her as not a teacher, but a friend that they could go to for advice. 

One question that they often asked her was about how she viewed the world. They couldn’t imagine how it felt like to be blind. She was never annoyed or mad at them for asking about her blindness; in fact she encouraged them to be curious. She told them how she painted a picture of the world through her other senses – touch, hearing, smell, and taste. To emphasize her point, she blindfolded each of them and conducted experiments like giving them two different foods to taste. Through unconventional experiments like these, they could understand a bit of her world and empathize with others who were plagued with blindness.

Although life wasn’t in any sense easy, she had a sense of fulfillment and was very content with what she had. Recently, however, her students were beginning to ask her about seeing color and soulmates but that was one question she had no answer to. She could only imagine what color would be like – blue would feel like the ocean, green would feel like the grass beneath her feet, red would feel like the blood running through her veins. Soulmates though, were beyond her imagination. She didn’t really believe in it and she knew it would not affect her ability to see anything. She believed there was no need for her to have one.

But fate works in mysterious ways. It had been a gloomy day with a downcast sky and she was walking hurriedly to her small, rotten shed that served as her classroom. As she stepped into the alleyway, she heard a group of her students muttering nervously among themselves.

“Something wrong?” she called out to them.

“Ma’am, there’s a guy covered in blood down here,” one of them hesitantly replied.

Running over, she reached her hand out and her 18-year old student guided her hand towards the bleeding man. She quickly felt for his arm and ran her fingers down until she located his wrist. Holding her thumb firmly on the vein that slightly protruded from the skin, she held her breath. It was there but very faint – the beat of the man’s heart.

She stood up and quickly barked out orders to the teenagers. Two of them split off to search for the doctor while the rest helped her carry the stranger to her rundown home. Once the doctor arrived, he spent a full half an hour tending to the man’s wounds. Her students watched silently in the background along with her until he was done.

Turning to her, the doctor gave his prognosis. “He’s hurt pretty bad. I tended to both the old wounds and the new ones. But who knows what other injuries he has on the inside?” 

She thanked him quietly and paid him for his services. As soon as he had left, one of her students spoke up. “Should we bring him to my place, ma’am?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll take care of him. You guys can go now. Thanks for your help,” she replied, smiling softly at each of them as they left her place.

As the door closed behind the last student, she heaved a deep sigh and turned her attention to the stranger. Placing her hand on the man’s incredibly chiseled chest, she felt his breathing had become more regular than before. She lightly ran her fingers up his chest across a few grooves that were scars and up to his face.  His skin was firm and smooth, so she knew he was a young man. He had a strong jawline and high cheekbones. His nose seemed to have been broken in several places before although it was now fixed. Her fingers traveled past his small closed eyes and stopped at his hair. Surprisingly, it felt smooth and silky, unlike any she had ever touched before in these slums. How he managed to maintain his hair in such good condition was beyond her comprehension. Still, it didn’t matter. She now had a mental picture of how the stranger looked like and admittedly, he did seem very attractive. 

However, she reminded herself that this attractive young man was found badly injured and had suffered similar wounds in the past – which made him seem like a dubious character. He had probably even committed several dozen crimes. But after many years of living with what people called the dregs of society, she had come to believe that nobody who lived down here could survive without being involved in something “immoral” or “illegal”. She herself had helped smuggle goods, rob, and in one case murder someone. It was the only way to live. 

She knew it had been a risky decision to let this man rest in her home but it wasn’t like she was a defenseless woman and to be honest, something about him made her feel… comfortable and at ease. Ever since she had first touched him in the alleyway, her heart had been racing nonstop. She wasn’t sure why, so she busied herself with chores, hoping that her nerves would settle with boring routine tasks.

A couple hours later, she plunked down on the moldy couch, exhausted but satisfied. She was about to lay her head on the arm rest when a groan emanated from the bed, sending her into high alert. Treading softly to the bed in the corner where the stranger lay, her senses were highly tuned. In this community, it was always dangerous to approach someone who had just woken up. 

She stood a foot away from the bed, and raised her voice slightly. “Hey, are you alright?” 

There was no response but she could feel the man stirring slowly. 

“What the – “

She spoke slowly, trying to calm his confusion. “You were passed out in the alley. I brought you back to my place.”

“Shit.” She heard something like a chuckle escape his lips.

“Were you the only woman who brought me here?” he asked.

Frowning, she shook her head hesitantly. “Yes, it was just me and a couple of my male students. Why?”

He remained silent for a while before replying, “Well, fuck. It seems like you’re my soulmate then.”

His words struck her like a ton of bricks. She took a step back, her legs quivering in confusion and shock. “Wha-what are you talking about?” she stuttered, barely able to form a complete sentence.

“I can see colors now,” came the curt reply.

She remained silent, trying to process the meaning behind those words. Putting two and two together suddenly seemed so difficult. Her breath came out in rapid gasps as her heartbeat yet again accelerated to the point that it felt like her heart would just burst out of her chest. Everything was happening too fast and she wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen now. Her students had talked and joked about how they would meet their soulmate and what would occur next but she had never given it any serious thought.  Now that it was actually happening to her, she didn’t know how to react.

“Oi, brat. What the hell is wrong with you? Can’t you see colors now?” the man who was her soulmate asked in a suspicious tone.

Calming herself down, she took a deep breath.

“I’m blind.”

 

Smiling to herself, she watched as the grey corn fields swept past her windows, the lighter shade corn bending in the breeze just like how the winds of change had blown her soulmate to her doorstep. She remembered how awkward and tense the atmosphere had been after she had stated her disability to her newly found soulmate. 

Eventually, he had gotten up and left her place despite her attempts to get him to stay and rest. Before he left, he had hesitated and thanked her for the help. And just like that, he was gone. ‘So much for soulmates,’ she had thought to herself at that time.

But people are soulmates for a reason. Not long after that, she had found out that one of her students was sneaking off to watch cage fights. The only thing that the Underground slums were famous for were its ruthless and murderous battles between two contenders. It was a battle to the death with absolutely no rules – except for the fact that everything stayed within the cage. Worried for her student’s safety, she had confronted him after class. He had then confessed to her that his mother was sick and he desperately needed the money to get appropriate treatment and medicine from the outside. The only way to salvage enough money in time to save her was by winning one cage fight. 

She had tried unconvincingly to dissuade him from the suicidal idea but his mind was set and she herself could not figure out a better way to raise the ridiculous amount of money in such a short time. Finally, she agreed to his plan on the condition that he would only enter the fight when she deemed him ready. He had been dubious as to how she would know that but relented after her adamant speeches. 

So she asked that he bring her to one of the cage fights so that she could experience firsthand how the battle went down. It had been utterly nerve-wracking for her when she heard each punch, each crack of bones, each tear of flesh, and each sound of pain that reverberated through the cramped arena. When the winner was finally announced, she breathed a sigh of relief but was interrupted by the sharp gasp of her student who had been watching as the winner of the fight removed his mask. 

“Ma’am! The guy we rescued the other day…. It’s him! There in the cage!” he exclaimed while the referee announced the result of the battle.

“And the winner is Levi!”

 

She recalled the shock and excitement that ran through her body as she met her soulmate for the second time. It suddenly made total sense why he had been injured that day she found him in the alleyway and explained all the past scars and wounds on his body. Then, she had a brainwave – a crazy idea, really – to ask the stranger, her soulmate, Levi, to train her student to fight.

Her idea obviously met with objection from both her student and Levi but her rationale along with some blackmailing and guilt-tripping had finally got the two of them to begrudgingly go along with her plan. As she was wary of the seasoned fighter, she watched everyday as Levi trained her student. 

The time that she spent watching them eventually culminated into long talks with Levi about the state of their world which then progressed into what their dream of the future would be. He talked fondly about having a farm outside their gated community and planting his own shitty crops, as he described them. He didn’t care about the constant threat posed by the undead that was out there. The risk was about the same or perhaps, even less than the risk he undertook each time he entered the cage. In particular, he talked about how this one place situated at the end of the bus line was rumored to have much fewer undead than others. Of course, the journey would be perilous but he believed it would be worth it.

She listened avidly, a new desire burning inside her as he filled her head with stories of the outside. All this while, she had been living a content life without wondering how the world was actually like. That was how she dealt with her disability – the world that she painted for herself was small and comfortable enough for her to live in. But now, her horizons had been expanded and she longed to actually see this place he talked about.

It wasn’t only the world that she wanted to see. As time had passed, she found herself slowly falling for the man that was supposed to be her soulmate. It wasn’t because of the magic ‘soulmate’ word but rather because of how similar yet different the two of them were. They were both strong, independent individuals that had led tough lives. But at the same time, they couldn’t be more dissimilar. They had the same beliefs and thought process but they approached problems differently. They lived life to the fullest but had different expectations of living conditions. And they also loved each other but expressed their love in different ways.

She had touched every part of his body, tasted every morsel, and smelled every inch. But it still wasn’t enough for her. The mental picture she had of him wasn’t enough to satiate her desire. What she didn’t know was that Levi felt the same way. After he had trained her student and brought him victory, Levi simply disappeared without a word.

The unending despair after he left was like a bottomless pit to her. Crying herself to sleep every night, she would wonder whether she had driven him away or whether she had been just a dispensable toy to him. Each knock on the door sent her flying to open it, only to be disappointed that it wasn’t him. Each letter that she received was torn open with great speed only to realize it wasn’t from him. 

It was about a month later when she received an anonymous parcel. In it, she found a large wad of cash and a letter that read:

_Use this for your eyes and buy a one-way ticket to the dream place. Don’t keep me waiting._

 

And now, another month later, she was well on her way to the aforementioned ‘dream place’. It was only when she left the slums to get treatment for her eyes that she heard about the news in the high society that a man by the name of Levi had defeated their reigning champion and snagged the million-dollar cash reward. Their ‘champion’ was supposed to be undefeated, not because of his strength, but because anyone who beat him would not survive the aftermath of being hunted down by the militia and tortured to death. The talk of the town was how this Levi person had escaped and where he could possibly be.

Although she now knew how he had procured the large amount of cash, she was incredibly worried about his well-being. Even the anxiety about the impending surgery could not overwhelm her fear for Levi’s safety. But once the surgery was done and she had recovered fully, the sight before her moved her to tears. Sure enough, she was only looking at hospital beds but the fact that she could see them without making a mental picture and projecting it onto her eternal darkness was liberating. It felt like she had been reborn into the world and the only thing left to do was find the man she loved.

Throughout her journey, nagging thoughts ate at her. What if Levi had not escaped the militia? What if he had but had not survived the journey here? What if he had survived but had died at the hands of the undead? What if…

 

“End of the line, mates!"

The voice of the bus driver who had gotten them through the difficult journey shook her from her reverie.  The mother and son got down first, throwing the bus driver a wave before stepping out into the open.  She hesitated at the steps, her heart beating furiously at the knowledge that she was probably minutes away from either her greatest fear or her sweetest dream. 

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and stepped out of the vehicle. In the distance, she could see the mother and son entering a quaint little cabin on top of the little hill. As she walked up, she looked around at the beautiful crops that probably belonged to them, a smile on her lips as she marveled at the beauty that she had previously only imagined but was now seeing with her own eyes.

When she reached the top of the hill, she gasped at the sprawling land in front of her, tinted in varying shades of grey. And at the very bottom of the hill was a man plowing the land – a man whom she had never seen before but a man whose picture she had painted in her mind a thousand times. 

Her breath hitched in her throat as she ran down the slope. The flowers that surrounded her now changing in hues of grey to something she had never seen before. Colors that she didn’t even know the name to, erupted in her vision. The scene before her was more spectacular than she could imagine. Different colors blended together in ways that accentuated each individual blade of grass or stalk of flower. 

But what made her almost stop breathing was the sight of the man in front of her who had ceased his activity to watch her running towards him. She stopped barely a foot away from him. His sharp eyes that she had etched into her memory gazed at her longingly, waiting for her to make a move. She tentatively reached out, her two hands shaking as they touched his face. A sob escaped from her lips as she traced every contour of his face, matching her memory of him with what she was seeing now. 

“Levi…” she finally cried.

The sound of her voice shook him into action. He pulled her into his firm embrace, closing his eyes as he once again smelled that familiar scent he had always dreamed of. 

The two lovers clutched each other tightly as if there were no tomorrow, their world complete and filled with vibrant colors that symbolized the start of their new life together.

A life without darkness.


End file.
